Tesla has brought in Gary Jiang, an 18-year Intel manufacturing veteran, to direct its ambitious Terafab chip fabrication plant in Texas, a move that suggests the company is moving from planning to actual execution on one of the most expensive manufacturing projects ever attempted. Jiang's appointment in June 2026 comes as Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI prepare to build a facility designed to produce chips for autonomous driving, AI training, and space applications.

What Is Terafab and Why Does It Matter?

Terafab is a joint venture announced by Elon Musk in March 2026 to vertically integrate semiconductor production under one roof. The project aims to handle every stage of chip manufacturing, from design through lithography, fabrication, memory production, advanced packaging, and testing. The initial prototype facility, called Terafab North Campus, will occupy 2 million square feet within Tesla's existing Giga Texas facility, with tool installation scheduled for the third quarter of 2026 and first silicon production targeted for early 2027.

A larger full-scale complex is planned for Grimes County, Texas, where county commissioners approved a property tax abatement package in June 2026. The cost figures are staggering: the Austin facility alone carries an estimated price tag of $20 billion to $25 billion, while SpaceX has pegged initial investment at $55 billion for the Grimes County prototype fab, with total investment potentially reaching $119 billion across all phases.

Who Is Gary Jiang and Why Does His Hiring Matter?

Jiang brings nearly two decades of hands-on experience in advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Most recently, he served as Factory Manager at Intel's Ocotillo campus in Arizona, where he oversaw the development transfer of Intel's 18A process node, one of the most technically complex transitions in Intel's recent history. Before that, he accumulated deep experience managing high-volume production of 14-nanometer and 22-nanometer chips, work that required managing thousands of process steps, yield optimization across millions of wafers, and coordinating enormous equipment and workforce logistics.

His move from Intel to Tesla is particularly significant because Intel formalized its position as a manufacturing partner in the Terafab project on April 7, 2026. Jiang arrives already fluent in the Intel 14A manufacturing process that Terafab plans to use for chip production, alongside 2-nanometer process technology for the North Campus. Bringing in someone who has personally managed the startup of advanced-node fabs at scale, rather than just designed or consulted on them, suggests Tesla is serious about hitting aggressive timelines.

What Chips Will Terafab Actually Produce?

The facility is slated to produce wafers for next-generation FSD (Full Self-Driving) inference chips, currently referred to as HW5 or AI5, as well as Dojo training tiles and chips optimized for operation in space. In other words, Terafab is not a speculative moonshot; it is the manufacturing backbone for Tesla's next wave of autonomous driving hardware. The AI5 inference chip will be critical to Tesla's push toward full autonomy, while Dojo training tiles will support the massive computational requirements of training Tesla's self-driving neural networks.

How Will Terafab Source Its Most Critical Equipment?

Terafab will depend heavily on ASML, the Dutch company that is the sole provider of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which cost approximately $400 million each. These machines are essential for manufacturing leading-edge chips for artificial intelligence applications. Without ASML, the world's three leading chip manufacturers, Taiwan Semiconductor, Samsung, and Intel, cannot make leading-edge chips for AI.

Elon Musk underscored this dependency when he called in virtually to ASML's annual technology conference in June 2026 to speak with CEO Christophe Fouquet. In a post on X, Musk wrote that "ASML should be treasured and supported. It is arguably the greatest company in Europe". SpaceX will need a growing number of chips for its data centers after signing recent deals to provide compute capacity to Google and Anthropic, making ASML's production capacity a critical bottleneck for the entire operation.

Elon Musk

Steps to Understanding Terafab's Timeline and Scale

• Phase 1 Tool Installation: Tool installation for the North Campus prototype is scheduled for the third quarter of 2026, meaning equipment delivery and setup will occur over the next few months from the article's publication date.
• First Silicon Production: The facility is targeting first silicon production in early 2027, which will mark the transition from construction and equipment setup to actual chip manufacturing.
• Full Volume Scaling: By 2028, Terafab is expected to reach full volume production, ramping up to deliver the computing power needed for Tesla's autonomous driving rollout and SpaceX's AI infrastructure expansion.

With first silicon now less than a year away on the published timeline, Jiang's appointment looks less like a strategic announcement and more like Tesla quietly putting the right operator in place to actually execute. Fab startups are notoriously schedule-sensitive, and experienced factory managers who have personally managed the startup of advanced-node fabs at scale are a scarce resource in the semiconductor industry.

The hiring also signals that Tesla is moving beyond theoretical planning into the operational phase of one of the most ambitious manufacturing projects in recent memory. Jiang's expertise in managing the complex logistics of advanced chip production, combined with Intel's formal partnership role, suggests that Terafab's aggressive timelines may actually be achievable, even if the final cost could exceed $100 billion across all phases.